Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians

The people sent here, nearly 400 from some fifty-three nations, were often not mentally ill at all. When Dr. Samuel Silk of St. Elizabeths inspected the asylum in March 1929, he found patients padlocked in their rooms overnight with uncovered chamber pots, metal wristlets and shackles, some fastened to water pipes, and long-term patients showing no active evidence of mental disease. The Indian Office had ruled stone grave markers an unwarranted expense. Harold Iron Shield led the first remembrance at the burial ground in 1988, and people still gather there every year.

What the plaque says

Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians Receiving Congressional appropriations in 1899, the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians was the second federal mental hospital and the first dedicated to American Indians. The first patient arrived in 1902, and through 1934, more than 370 patients - ages two to eighty, from fifty tribes nationwide - lived here. Patients did domestic and agricultural work onsite, were occasionally shown to paying visitors, and underwent treatment with methods later deemed outdated and dehumanizing. From 1929 to 1933, federal inspectors found intolerable conditions, inadequate staffing, several sane patients kept by force, and numerous other abuses. In 1933, John Collier, the newly appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs, ordered the asylum closed. G. J. Moen, with the Canton Chamber of Commerce, filed an injunction to keep the asylum open, but it was overturned in federal court. Many patients were discharged and those who still needed care were sent to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington D.C. The major buildings used by the asylum have since been demolished. The Hiawatha Asylum cemetery, where at least 121 patients were buried in unmarked graves, is located between the 4th and 5th fairways of the Hiawatha Golf Club. In 1998, the cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Falls Park — 20 mi
  The falls a town company came for in 1856, abandoned in 1862, and tried to make pay with a seven-story quartzite mill that ran for barely two years.

More markers nearby

• Canton Ski Hill — steps away
• Augustana - The School on Wheels — 1.4 mi
• Canton — 2.1 mi
• Shindler — 13 mi